Prof Turner studies factors that regulate virus-specific T cell recruitment and differentiation after infection.  His lab utilizes a multidisplinary approach to examine how differences in T cell receptor recognition of peptide-MHC antigens impacts development and differentiation of virus-specific T cell responses. He is also interested in factors that shape the transcriptional and epigenetic signatures that define virus-specific T cell differentiation from the naive state into both the effector and memory populations. He utilizes a combination of ChIP-Seq, RNA-Seq, bioinformatics and systems biology, inducible shRNA knockdown, retroviral bone-marrow transduction, gene-deficient mouse models and 3C approaches for determining promoter-enhancer interactions. Such analysis will tell us if the molecular mechanisms regulating transcriptional control of T cell effector function are unique and/or shared among key effector genes. This will lead to identification of key immune correlates of protective immunity and will contribute to improvement of immunotherapies for both infectious and autoimmune disease.